You are here

Amazon eyes Netflix for e-books: A move to get more Prime subscribers

Amazon is reportedly planning a Netflix-like subscription service for e-books in a move that would be another perk for Amazon Prime subscribers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is in talks with book publishers about subscription access to a library of e-books. Now there are a bevy of issues with this concept. The Journal notes that publishers are wary and the latest titles may be excluded—just like Netflix’s streaming service.

For Amazon, this e-book library is likely to be lumped in with its Amazon Prime services. Today, you pay Amazon $79 a year and you get unlimited two day shipping and access to movies and TV shows.

Comments

If it goes through, it sounds like good news for libraries to me! It seems like Redbox inspired a lot of people who had never been to a library before to come in and check out our free DVD collection - I'd bet this would encourage more people to browse their library's digital catalog.

one of the problems with ebooks for libraries is no leasing program for ebooks... we would get more bestsellers if we could rent 100 copies for a few months for a couple of bucks then buy the 2-3 copies we'd need to satisfy any lingering demand. right now, we have over 100 people waiting for the ePub version of The Help. and that's without any Kindle users.
so maybe if Amazon gets the publishers to accept ebook lending, then we should be able to get it for libraries.